We have Whatcom Manufacturing making our Kingpins. Our equipment at school was not sufficient to cut the parts accurately. It took them about 7 hours of machine time to accurately accomplish this task for us. 7 hours. Wow.

We have vacuum infused a frame, four fenders, and a wheel hub. We learned that we need to put down a layer of spray adhesive in order to get a good enought seal for the vacuum bag while infusing a part. We found out we did not have enough relief so the part would not come out of the mold. We then redesigned the mold and hopefully we will be able to make another wheel hum part next week.

Just to clarify BAUG stands for Bellingham AutoCad User Group. But that's too long to mention which is why it goes by BAUG. I think that's a cute nickname. Anyways, the BAUG meeting was scheduled for our InvenTeam to show everyone our presentation and prototype. It went great. We had more then 2 hours for our presentation time. Yeah. 2 hours. This was easily one of the longest presentations that we have ever given as an InvenTeam. I know every one of our team members could feel the pressure but we all stuck together and pulled it all off! Our team looked snazzy with our outfits and our professional attitude. I think we did a great job covering the technical details during the question and answer part from the community members. We learned a lot of things during our presentation. We learned about communication skills and how to handle questions effectively. I would also like to add that Elli and I also learned a lot about wearing heels for two hours. If it ain't hurting, it ain't helping. So yeah. Presentation was successful and I'm pretty sure we impressed quite a few people!

This month we asked, "do we use hyraulics or linear activators or pneumatics?". We have decided we need to use hydraulics. We would like to spend more time picking apart the advantages of each but we need to move forward. We will test alternatives once we have a working prototype.

We have continued to contact local businesses for support. We have done presentations for Conoco Phillips, Intalco and B.A.U.G. WE have ongoing contact from these corporatioons and are waiting to hear what level of support they can offer us. We have to date reaised $4500.00 in support and pledges.

We redesigned the kingpin and steering components as a result of our conversation with Bob Mighill of Tilting Motor Works. He has spent several years studying leaning motorcycles. He does not have to worry about weight but many of the concepts follow through. We were right on with several ideas. These are improvements he is looking into incorporating into his next designs. Lean on the traverse of a hill – the trike should lean to be plumb not perpendicular to the surface under the trike. King pins need to center on the tire patch not angle as the traditional trike designs. When you add leaning this makes the geometry extremely difficult and the steering unpredictable. We think this will be a huge benefit to our design. BJ fiberglass has agreed to spray the gel-coat as we do not have any spray equipment.

Why yes, we sure are a dedicated team because we held work days over Christmas break. There were 6 trike work days over Christmas break, with a combined total of 85 hours spent building the trike! Jordan Kooi was the student leader and showed real work initiative.

We CNC machined foundation foam for plugs to develop molds for the carbon fiber parts. We then covered the foam with fiberglass and epoxy resign. Next, we covered the epoxy with the vinyl ester resign. Now we sand and cover the materials with gel-coat and fiberglass to make the actual mold.

We CNC foam and wrapped our trike A-Arm with carbon fiber and vacuumed the resin through it. WE tested our new A-ARm design with over 500 pounds and it held. I think we can make the part lighter by maybe not using so many layers of carbon fiber and possibly changing the type of foam used in the part.

We have been working on answer questions – unfortunately each question brings up more questions than answers. Do we use Linear Activators, Hydraulics, Pneumatics, to control the lean? Several iteration of pros / cons with little or no distinct winner. We will need to test each to see. Perhaps a hybrid of two?